Chapter 9: The Forest
When Annabeth dreamed, she was lying in a bed of fire. It licked up at her skin, melting it and turning her bones to ash.
She couldn't move away from it.
She tried to scream and yell for someone to help her, to pull her out of the flames that were slowly devouring her. Never had she been so helpless before.
But no one came.
She woke up instead to Rachel handing her a bag of chips. Doritos.
The mortal looked at her carefully across the fire Annabeth had built from small twigs that she had managed to scavenge. With the dancing of the firelight on her hair, Rachel's red hair looked as if it were on fire as well.
Fire.
Annabeth hated it.
Rachel crunched on a chip in her mouth before swallowing. "Bad dreams?" she asked.
"Something like that," Annabeth agreed.
Once the rumbling of Anteuas's arena collapsing on itself ended and the girls deemed themselves as far away from the danger as possible, they had decided to stop for the night. Rachel had said that she could tell they were close to Daedalus's Workshop, so they had chosen one of the slightly nicer halls off their trail to stay for the night.
"I don't know how you do it," Rachel admitted.
"Do what?"
The redhead shook her head, searching for words. She had been notably far quieter after the incident in the arena. "I guess…" she hesitated, "I'm not sure how exactly you can sit there so nonchalantly. I mean—you almost died! Multiple times! I was just scared standing there, but when you were out there, you didn't even look like you were afraid of anything!"
Annabeth considered Rachel's words, "It's hard to think of a life where you don't spend every day nearly dying. I guess as demigods it's just kinda in the job description."
"That doesn't seem very fair."
The demigoddess shrugged, "Who said it was? Just because I spend my summers going on life threatening quests doesn't mean I want to."
"So why do you, then?"
Annabeth stared at the fire in front of them. Did Percy burn up? she wondered, thinking about what had happened in her life to lead her to this very point where her best friend was dead. She thought about why she had gone on this quest in the first place—why they had ever decided to go on any at all. It wasn't for the gods, no. Not really. There had always been something else more important in Annabeth's life than her rulers on Olympus.
"I think we do it for family," she told Rachel. "Not necessarily the Olympians, but each other. The demigods. Camp Half-Blood.
"I'd take a hundred near-death experiences over letting anyone in my family die."
And it was true. Her first quest with Percy? It had never been for the Olympians. Not really. She had gone on the quest because she had wanted to see the real world and because she wanted to help the Camp. After that, everything she had done had been for her friends.
Rachel smiled wistfully, "That sounds nice. Having people so close to you that they'd be willing to do anything for you."
With a pang, Annabeth remembered that Rachel's family didn't care about her. That she could disappear for a whole week and they wouldn't even notice. All this time she had spent envying the mortal's normal life, and Annabeth hadn't even considered that there could be something she had that Rachel was jealous of.
Annabeth nodded with Rachel's statement instead. "It is," she agreed softly.
And in one of those rare few moments of life, Annabeth felt lucky.
It felt almost too easy after that to get to Daedalus's Workshop. So easy that Annabeth had never felt so stupid for all of the wrong turns and scrimmages her questing group had taken before. If she had realized how to guide her group before, then Percy would have never died. And maybe that fact is what hurt the most.
She was wrong from the beginning. Daedalus's Workshop was not in the oldest, most ancient looking parts of the maze. Just the opposite, however: the Labyrinth's walls became smoother and sleeker as modern brick replaced the old and cracked marble.
"Through that door," Rachel murmured as Annabeth spotted a wooden door at the end of the hall, for the first time seeing the light pooling out of its cracks that Rachel had seen all along.
Annabeth felt suspense level through her body as she moved faster to reach the door. This was her quest, and she was seeing it through. This was her quest and she had almost succeeded.
The two girls gasped in unison as Annabeth creaked the door open, revealing the contents of the room they had for so long searched for to their eyes.
Their eyes flooded with natural light that they had surely not seen for hours, momentarily blinding them. Round windows covered the walls of an ovular room, surrounding Annabeth and Rachel in a forestry atmosphere as they spotted tree branches waving outside of the glass. Work benches and desks covered the room with unfinished projects and architectural masterpieces; two beautiful and gilded golden pairs of wings caught Annabeth's attention as they hung from one of the wooden walls. It had seemed almost like the door the girls had stepped through led them on through a portal to an entirely different universe.
"Where are we?" Rachel's voice was full of awe as she peeked past one of the windows to discover the room they were in was suspended hundreds of feet in the air in the branches of a large reddish-brown tree.
"The Redwood Forest, California," a man's voice responded from above.
Annabeth and Rachel snapped their heads to attention as the person walked down from the stairs of a loft. He gave a thin smile of welcome, stretching the beginning of wrinkles out on his face and bristling his graying beard.
"Quintus." Annabeth recognized the man immediately as the temporary swordmaster at Camp Half-Blood that had mysteriously disappeared. "What are you doing here?"
Rachel knitted her brows in confusion, but the man did not appear dissuaded. "Why, my dear," Quintus explained calmly, "I am here because I live here."
As if. "This is Daedalus's Workshop."Annabeth said, though there was a tinge of question to the end of her voice, as if she wasn't quite sure where she was anymore.
Quintus nodded, "I am Daedalus."
Annabeth froze momentarily, a wrench thrown in the gears of her brain from the sheer audacity of this old man. The daughter of Athena scoffed, "And I'm the Queen of England. Like hell you're Daedalus."
She wasn't sure if she was madder at the idea of Daedalus being in camp the whole time she kept talking about the Labyrinth like a complete, starry-eyed idiot or if it was because Percy's death was completely avoidable from the beginning.
Annabeth was leaning towards the latter as Quitus admitted to cheating death and using the body in front of them as a vessel for his mind and soul.
"This whole quest," Annabeth was steaming, "was a complete waste of time! Do you know how much time we've wasted trying to find you? Valuable time that could've been used to prepare camp for war!" At this point, she was up in his face, her index finger millimeters from Daedalus's nose as she scolded him, "Percy's dead because your sorry excuse of an inventor's behind couldn't just speak up!"
"I came to your camp to decide if it was worth saving," the inventor said simply, unbothered by how murderous Annabeth's glare was. "Your camp has few redeemable qualities, however, and those are few and far. Between all of the infighting that already goes on, you will stand no chance against Kronos's forces."
Annabeth took a step back, betrayal alight in her eyes. This was her brother. Another child of Athena. "You disgrace," she hissed in disgust, "You've joined Kronos in favor of saving yourself. No wonder our mother thinks so low of you."
An emotion flashed across Daedalus's gaze that could only be described as regret, but it quickly left before Annabeth could take advantage of it. "You must understand," Daedalus explained to her, "that the titans have offered me a safe haven in exchange for my services. They have agreed to rid the Underworld of Minos on the base that I hand over Ariadne's string. I would be able to live the rest of my life out of hiding without fear."
Annabeth gave an empty laugh. It was pathetic how close she had come to completing her quest only to be thrown this hard and burning curveball to her gut. "You think the titans will leave you alone now just because you gave them Ariadne's string? They'll do nothing but kill you the first chance they get; they have no honor."
Daedalus stared back coldly, but Annabeth knew her words dug deep into his skin.
The daughter of Athena turned away from her once-upon-a-time idol to look at Rachel, but before the blonde could speak, there was a loud bang that blasted off the wooden door the two girls had first entered.
"Well, well, well," a snooty and girlish voice called, "What do we have here?"
The senior empousa cheerleader from Percy and Rachel's new school smiled evilly as she entered the room, attended by four other dracaenae.
"Kelli," Annabeth's voice was icy as she acknowledged the cheerleader turned monster.
The empousa shined her fangs in the two girls' faces, causing Rachel to flinch as the monster just crackled. "The Titan Lord was wise to order me to follow you, Chase. After all of the trouble you've caused in Antaeus's arena, it's only right that I kill you and your little mortal friend."
"Antaeus has only seen half of what I could do to you," Annabeth snarled. Kelli was about to get payback for interrupting her only chance of ever going on a date with Percy.
Daedalus looked between the two enemies, "Is there any chance you two could move this somewhere away from my workshop?"
Kelli's yellow eyes flashed to the inventor, "Don't think you're not involved in this," she hissed, "Kronos has no use for you know, Daedalus."
The son of Athena went straight from distraught to horror, oddly pleasing Annabeth. "The titans and I had an agreement!" he argued.
Kelli shrugged, "All good agreements are broken."
"You can't just do that!"
"Watch me," the empousa said, before throwing herself at Annabeth with her fangs and claws gleaming from the sheen of the sun through the windows.
Annabeth quickly rolled to the ground, narrowly avoiding Kelli's claws as she pulled out her knife to defend.
The other dracaenae with Kelli followed in the empousa's footsteps, quick to attack both Daedalus and Rachel.
The redhead mortal let out a battlecry, knocking a stack of steel beams leaning against the wall onto one of the dracaenae before jumping across a workbench as she defended herself against the monsters. Daedalus himself was also holding his own in battle rather well with his sword against two other dracaenae, but Annabeth knew they were outnumbered and quickly losing.
"We need an escape!" Annaebeth called to the inventor desperately while throwing a random steel pole at Kelli that forced the empousa to duck under a table. "It's five against three, we don't have a chance!"
"The wings!" Daedalus got out between the fighting, "Escape with the wings—save your camp!"
The daughter of Athena turned to the pairs of golden wings hanging on the wall across the room from her. "Rachel!" she called, quickly catching the bright eyes of the mortal between the chaos, "Get those wings!"
The redhead nodded, and Annabeth cursed as Kelli threw herself onto the distracted demigoddess again. She shouted in pain as Kelli sliced the bottom of her jeans into ribbons, wounding her calf. Blood pooled like a puddle into her shoe as she avoided the former cheerleader's next advances.
"It's too bad you won't be here when your little camp burns to the ground," Kelli teased as her claws and Annabeth's knife crossed.
The empousa yowled as Annabeth stepped on her stupid cheerleader foot and threw an elbow to her gut.
"They're ready!" Rachel called from across the room.
Annabeth turned from her fight with the evil empousa, bounding across workbenches and tables to get to Rachel's side next to a large window, panting heavily and running high on adrenaline.
The redhead already had her pair of wings buckled on, looking almost like an ethereal angel if Annabeth gazed at her in the right lighting.
Quickly, Annabeth threw the straps of the wings over her shoulders and buckled them together across her chest, vaguely surprised they weighed only a little more than the average backpack. She had no time to study the exact mechanisms of how the wings worked as Kelli and her dracaenae crossed the room, deciding instead to simply wing it as she used a piece of iron setting on a nearby table to break the window.
"Ready?" she asked Rachel, stepping onto the windowsill to face the giant trees spreading across the vast Redwood Forest.
Rachel steeled her green eyes on the forest surrounding them, "Ready as I'll ever be."
She stepped up to the windowsill next to Annabeth, but very briefly the blonde shared gazes with Daedalus, across the room and surrounded by dracaenae, the inventor only giving her a small nod of acknowledgement.
"Now!" Annabeth shouted.
And so they jumped.
…and then they flew.
"I'm totally down for doing that again sometime," Rachel said, her green eyes still wild with adrenaline and her curly red hair frizzed from the wind.
"Speak for yourself," Annabeth muttered, still recalling how she had almost flown splat against a great Redwood tree while throwing around her arms like a chicken because she was still discovering how to work the golden wings.
The daughter of Athena sat exhausted on a large redwood log, wincing as she examined her clawed ankle that was blood-soaked and throbbing all thanks to Kelli. She had only brought a small amount of ambrosia with her through the Labyrinth in fear of taking too much from her camp right before a possible battle, but Annabeth had used all the rest of her supply after her battles in Antaeus's arena.
She was hurt and tired and a complete failure.
"All that work," Annabeth sighed in defeat, "All the fighting and death just to fail in the end, to not even complete my quest."
Rachel looked somberly at the demigoddess, "What will we do now?"
Momentarily, Annabeth was touched by how Rachel had used the "we" in her question, automatically adding herself into the fray with Annabeth despite the high and dangerous odds stacked against them.
"We need to return to camp," Annabeth decided, "Kelli made it clear: an attack is coming. We need to give the camp as much time as possible to prepare."
Rachel fiddled with a twig in her hands, looking nervous, "Do you think that the titans can even be defeated? Do you think that your camp can even beat all those monsters?"
An image of burning cabins and sounds of screaming flashed through the demigoddess's mind unpleasantly. "I have to believe that we'll win," Annabeth responded softly, "Or else there won't be any home left for us to go."
Annabeth cursed as she stumbled over a tree root, wishing the stupid empousa Kelli a straight trip to Tartarus next time they crossed paths. Her ankle exploded in fireworks of pain with every step and as her blood slowly began to clot, she could still feel the trickle of warmth seep into her crimson soaked sock.
Rachel bit her lip, giving Annabeth a side glance as the pair trekked through the Redwood Forest. "Maybe we should rest for a moment," the redhead suggested tentatively.
The demigoddess shook her head without a moment's hesitation, "I'll rest when I'm dead, which might be sooner rather than later."
The mortal snorted, "Quite the optimist."
"So I've been told."
The forest around them was mostly quiet, save for the rustle of leaves as the wind danced about and the songs of birds calling from above. The two girls seemed very small compared to the giant red trees that seemed to touch the firmament up high. They could tell by the direction of the late evening sun that they were heading west towards the coast, but the vast forest expanded as far as the eye could see with no hint of ending.
The girls would either walk until they met civilization or until they found a mark hinting at a Labyrinth entrance. Whichever came first.
Rachel accomplished most of the talking as they hiked their way to an unknown destination, Annabeth frustration brimming to the seams as she was forced to acknowledge how lost they truly were. The redhead spoke about her passion for art and painting. She explained how much she loved expressing herself through the colors and building something worthwhile. Something that could be seen.
Not even meaning to, Annabeth agreed with Rachel and told her that she was going to be a great architect one day that built something too.
Rachel's green eyes had instantly brightened as she hopped over a fallen tree branch. The mortal started rattling off different places like the Library of Congress and the Basilica, asking if the demigoddess had ever seen or been to one of the places before. Rachel was enthusiastic as she marveled at the beauty of the architecture of those buildings paired with the vivid paintings covering the walls and ceilings in perfect harmony.
"Well make something like those one day," Rachel told Annabeth, "You build an architectural masterpiece and I'll paint your ceilings using every color ever seen."
And suddenly, not for the life of herself, could Annabeth even comprehend why she had ever so much as even disliked Rachel Elizabeth Dare. She was smart, creative, and bold, unafraid to stand by Annabeth's side in the dangerous world she's been introduced to.
She was a friend.
Annabeth smiled at Rachel, "How bout you paint my ceilings and walls? I want people to walk into my parthenon and think they've been transported to another dimension."
The redhead grinned, "Sounds like a plan."
They both began to avidly discuss what they'd build and where they would build it, talking about dimensions and landscapes and even what the building would be for. Annabeth found her mind drifting away from the world of Greek Mythology for the first time in years, feeling as if, for a moment, they were just two mortals on a friendly hike to get some fresh air and not on a deadly quest to stop the Titan Lord Kronos.
It wasn't until Annabeth abruptly shushed Rachel midlaugh that the demigoddess was brought back down to Earth from her fantasies.
"What is it?" Rachel asked in a hushed tone, sensing the serious mood enough to know to lower her voice.
Quietly, Annabeth unsheathed her knife, ears prickling in the silence of the forest and eyes darting in every direction, seeking a hidden beast hiding in the darkening foliage. Night was almost upon them.
"I heard something," the blonde murmured in Rachel's ear, dragging her to one of the huge Redwood trees in order to shield their backs from one side of a possible attack.
Annabeth stood in front of Rachel defensively, hefting her knife at their hidden enemy. "Who's there?" she called unwaveringly to the trees, watching even the single movement of a leaf from the corner of her eye.
There was a cold drift of wind in the air before an amused voice spoke back, coming from above them, "How bout the Emperor of Rome?"
Rachel jumped in alarm, letting out a small squeak, as a figure dropped from the lower branches of a nearby tree, seemingly appearing out of thin air.
The figure stood from their squatted landing, brushing off their pants. "Fancy seeing you here, Annie," they moved towards the daughter of Athena.
Annabeth found herself grinning slightly, looking at the girl in front of her that was wearing a shiny silver parka, black eyeliner, and a tiara on her head. "Nice to see you too, Thalia."
The two questers soon found themselves standing in a camp full of man-hating girls with raging anger issues and sharp arrows. A few of the Hunters gazed untrusting at the pair, but most of the Hunters of Artemis easily welcomed Rachel and Annabeth to their fold, seeing as they were both females.
"So, what brings the Hunters to the Redwood Forest, Thalia?" Annabeth asked after taking a bite of her smores. Herself, Rachel, Thalia, along with a couple other Hunters sat in attendance around a shrinking campfire.
The daughter of Zeus poked around the fire a bit with a longer stick, "The usual," she shrugged, "Artemis has us busy hunting another monster along the West Coast."
"Any luck finding it?"
"Unfortunately not," the warm glow of the fire reflected onto her face highlighted her frown, "We completely lost its trail in Washington."
Another Hunter, Phoebe, grumbled next to her lieutenant, "That eruption destroyed any trace of it even being there."
Annabeth swallowed, sharing gazes with Rachel for a moment, "You guys were at Mount Saint Helens as well?"
Thalia dropped her stick into the fire, gaping at Annabeth, "What the hell were you doing at Mount Saint Helens, Annie? In fact, what the hell are you doing exactly? The last place I would have ever expected to find you, wandering the Redwood Forest with a random mortal girl!" Thalia paused. "No offense," she added, glancing furtively at Rachel.
"None taken," the redhead responded, "I only understand half of what's going on anyways."
Annabeth bit her lip, unable to decide how she wanted to proceed. The events of both before and after the Mount Saint Helens eruption were hefty in weight. "The camp is in trouble, Thalia," she told the other demigoddess grimly, "Kronos's forces are marching to attack as we sit here now."
"We have a border for a reason," Thalia pointed out, "Won't my pine block most of the attack?"
"Not if they're coming from the inside," Annabeth disagreed. She explained to Thalia the doorway to the Labyrinth hiding inside of Zeus's Fist and how the titans now have a way of guiding themselves through its maze with Ariadne's string.
The daughter of Zeus gazed angrily at the bright fire and Annabeth swore the hair on arms was rising as if she were seconds away from being struck by lightning. "I can't believe Luke would stoop as low as to attack camp," she murmured.
"I don't think any of us really know what Luke is truly capable of anymore," Annabeth agreed sadly.
Thalia twisted her silver charmed bracelet, a beauty that could easily be disarmed if she activated it into a battle shield. "We need to protect Camp Half-Blood," she decided.
Phoebe nodded in agreement with her lieutenant, "Without the demigods to do their bidding and make sacrifices, the Olympians will grow weak."
Thalia turned towards Annabeth, eyebrows raised, "This still doesn't explain why you're all the way on the other coast with a mortal."
Annabeth winced, "Yeah, about that…"
"Please tell me you didn't leave camp virtually defenseless, Annie," Thalia begged, "At least tell me Percy is still there."
Her gut twisted and yanked at her heart, "Thalia…" she spoke hopelessly, "About Percy…"
The daughter of Zeus looked unimpressed, but Annabeth's mouth seemed to be stuck full of taffy. "Don't tell me," Thalia shook her head, "What did Kelp Head get himself into this time?"
Annabeth shook her head, trying to stop the tears brimming in her eyes. "He's gone," she whispered, swallowing that stuck feeling deep in her throat.
"Gone?" Thalia's blue eyes widened in horror, "As in dead? Percy?" She shook her head in disbelief, her mind incompatible with registering such wrong information, "That's not possible."
The other Hunters, seeming to sense the serious topic of their conversation, began to surround the fire, murmuring about themselves.
"Mount Saint Helens," Annabeth recalled quietly, only the crackle of the fire and the rustle of forest leaves still singing, "Percy and I were about to be overrun. He told me to leave, that he had a plan…" she looked down at her hands, unwilling to watch as Thalia's facade crumbled, "I swear I can still hear the sound of that mountain rupturing…"
Annabeth wasn't deaf to the whispers shared among the Hunters, of great prophecies and powerful demigods, but she found that she didn't really care what the Hunters thought. Their loyalties lie with an Olympian goddess, not with Camp Half-Blood.
Thalia was still speechless as Annabeth told her the rest of the story: Grover and Tyson parting ways to find Pan, waiting two weeks for Percy's funeral, meeting Rachel to guide her through the Labyrinth, and their outcome after meeting Daedalus.
"Now we need to head to camp before Kronos's army gets there first," Annabeth told the Hunters, "We need to beat Luke."
The dimming fire crackled as all eyes were on the daughter of Athena, unblinkingly.
"There's a nearby sacred Redwood grove," a young ten-year-old Hunter spoke up, "An entrance to the Labyrinth will be there."
Thalia nodded a few times, almost to herself as she seemed to work up the courage to speak again, "We'll go there when Dawn shows her fingers. Camp Half-Blood will have the protection of Artemis's Hunt."
She looked at Annabeth solemnly across the campfire, a glint to her eyes that the daughter of Athena was positive she had never seen before. Understanding passed between the two demigoddesses. Percy might be gone, but the fight was far from over.
Author's Note: That's right, I added Thalia.
